UTMB develops new online tool for nurses

As tremendous advances are made in medicine, practitioners have new tools, but they also have more information to absorb and incorporate to provide evidence-based patient care: integrating best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient’s perspectives.

For the bedside nurse, this information can be lifesaving but time consuming. This has been a huge problem - until now.

The University of Texas Medical Branch has developed a new program that trains nurses how to pose questions that will point them to the needed information quickly. The Disciplined Clinical Inquiry - Evidence-Based Practice Literacy pathway is an online tool that helps nurses rapidly access filtered research evidence that present information in concise, easy to understand formats. An article describing this new program is available in the Journal for Nurses in Professional Development.

The EBP approach is becoming the “new normal” in patient care. UTMB’s online program offers a streamlined yet full education of the EBP skillset using online modules that take about three hours to learn. The standard DCI-EBP programs may take 50 hours to master.

“Mainstreaming EBP to bedside nurses with differing levels of professional experience, education, and generational profile is a challenge for nurses in professional development,” said Dolora Sanares-Carreon, lead author and EBP nursing program manager at UTMB. “There is a clear need for a simplified process for learning these skills in order to address the realities of patient care at the time of treatment.”

To ensure that the program was optimally designed, the researchers collected feedback from a focus group of nurses with various levels of practice and clinical specialties. Once completed, UTMB implemented the online program for all levels of nurses. The program has enhanced the ability of these nurses to engage in EBP.

UTMB is hosting the second annual UTMB Health EBP National Conference on April 17-18, 2015 at the Galveston Island Convention Center. The goal of the 2015 conference is to examine real-world approaches to build and foster a transformative EBP health care ecosystem. Click here to register.

“DCI-EBP Literacy provides nurses with the tools they need to shift the focus from following protocols to a more dynamic approach focused on patient outcomes,” said Sanares-Carreon. “We are exploring a mobile app for nurses to use in addition to our online modules.”